Kunzea toelkenii

Detailed description

Shrubs up to 4 × 6 m; ‘juveniles’ usually prostrate and trailing up to 4 m diameter, often flowering, eventually developing several, central, ascending branches; ‘adults’ forming widely spreading (up to 2 m diam.), flat-topped shrubs, with pendulous branches and branchlets; trunk bases usually bearing epicormic, prostrate growth spreading up to 4 m diam. Trunk 1–10, ascending to suberect, highly contorted, twisted, bent, and spiralled, 0.10–0.40 m d.b.h.; mostly arising from the top of a broad rootstock. Bark coriaceous, grey or grey-brown, ± elongate, cracking into highly irregular pieces with rather sinuous margins; detaching inwards. Branches numerous, widely spreading, ± serpentine, flexuose, pendulous and interwoven; branchlets numerous, slender, pendulous, leafy; those of epicormic growth, straight, prostrate or pendulous if arising from basal half of trunk,; indumentum copious; hairs of two types: long, appressed, flexuose to 0.26 mm long, and smaller divergent hairs, with curled and spiralled apices 0.04–0.18 mm. Leaves with lamina 2.6–8.5 × 0.6–2.5 mm, dark glossy green or bright-green, obovate, clavate, to broadly oblanceolate; apex sharply acute to apiculate, base attenuate; glabrous; lamina margin finely to densely sericeous, hairs weakly flexuose, to 0.5 mm long, aligned in 1–2 uninterrupted rows meeting just short of leaf apiculus. Inflorescence 1–10-flowered corymbiform botryum up to 40 mm long; inflorescences at the ultimate branchlet terminus uncommon (except in trailing epicormic growth), these elongated (up to 80 mm long) bearing well developed terminal vegetative growth, often with the uppermost flowers male. Pherophylls deciduous, initially foliose, soon squamiform, 0.4–1.6 mm long, foliose pherophylls green to bronze-green, shortly lanceolate to obovate, squamiform pherophylls amber-brown to brown, narrowly deltoid to ovate. Pedicels 1.6–3.8 mm long copiously invested with short, divergent to subantrorse, silky hairs. Flower buds bluntly clavate to obconic, rarely pyriform, apex flat prior to bud burst with calyx valves not meeting. Flowers 3.6–9.0 mm diam., often functionally male toward end of flowering season. Hypanthium 1.7–3.2 × 2.8–4.3 mm, green, dark green or red-green; obconic to funneliform, bearing five persistent calyx lobes; surface smooth, finely and rather densely puberulent; hairs silky. Calyx lobes 5, upright, 0.8–1.2 × 0.7–1.2 mm, persistent, ovate, broadly ovate to ovate-deltoid, glabrous except for ciliate margins. Receptacle pink at anthesis, darkening dark magenta or maroon-black at fertilisation. Petals 5–6, 1.5–2.8 × 1.5–2.6 mm, white, orbicular to very broadly ovate, apex obtuse to rotund, margins ± entire, oil glands colourless. Stamens 20–50 in 1–3 weakly defined whorls, filaments white. Anthers dorsifixed, 0.06–0.09 × 0.05–0.08 mm, testicular-oval to testicular-ellipsoid, latrorse. Pollen white. Anther connective gland prominent, pale lemon to pink when fresh, drying yellow to pale orange, spheroidal, finely papillate. Ovary absent in males flowers, 3–5 locular, each with 12–24 ovules in two rows on each placental lobe. Style absent in male flowers, 1.0–1.8 mm long, white; stigma capitate, scarcely wider than style, flat, greenish-white, cream or pale pink, surface papillate. Fruits 2.1–3.0 × 2.5–3.7 mm, light brown to grey, obconic, broadly obconic, to cupular. Seeds 0.50–1.02 × 0.52–0.68 mm, oblong, oblong-obovate, testa semi-glossy, amber, orange-brown to brown, surface coarsely reticulate.